Documenting the occasionally fascinating life of Taylor

How to Make an Xbox Cake

Remember that post on fondant? Last week it was my friend Matt’s birthday. He plays Xbox games constantly. Therefore, I decided to try and make an Xbox 360 controller using cake, frosting, and fondant.

1. The Cake
This recipe modifies a basic cake mix and is my go-to cake recipe. It’s pretty hard to make a really good moist homemade cake, so this is the best of both worlds. You will need the following ingredients:

Step 1: Combine dry ingredients
Step 2: Add the liquids. I just pour in an indeterminate amount of vanilla so do whatever here. Make sure to beat the eggs slightly before adding.
Step 3: Beat everything together!
Step 4: Pour batter into greased pans. In these pictures I’m using two mini pans that were found at an Asian store. Don’t know the size… but this makes pretty much the same amount as a regular boxed cake mix.
Step 5: Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. It’s done when a toothpick comes out clean.

Step 1: Cut out the image of the controller. Trace the basic shape and cut the cake.
Step 2: Frost all sides of it with white frosting. (You will notice I’ve placed it on the “base” layer at this point).
Step 3: The frosting needs to harden a bit so that we can make it look like plastic. So in the interim, make the fondant pieces. There are really no instructions here other than try to match colors and relative sizes of the different parts on an Xbox controller. I mixed together different parts white, green, and yellow to get the color of the “X” and black and white to get the proper gray (which doesn’t really come across well in these photos).
Step 4: Use a SLIGHTLY damp paper towel, or the side of a knife if you’re skilled, to smooth over the frosting. NOTE: I didn’t actually do this for this cake because I forgot; I just put the fondant pieces straight on it. But it really does make it look better. Another note, you might’ve noticed that in these photos I’m not using the same cake I started with. I ran into some size issues with the other pans. So just pretend that the previous cake recipe goes along with this decorating instruction. But, without further ado, here is our finished Xbox 360 Controller cake!